<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>clinomania by loupettes</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27091297">clinomania</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/loupettes/pseuds/loupettes'>loupettes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-09 03:14:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,302</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27091297</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/loupettes/pseuds/loupettes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"But on the odd occasion she’d wake and he’d still be sleeping, and she’d fallen into the habit of mapping out his freckles, like tiny constellation points across a time lord’s face. She knew those freckles, knew their every position in relation to the others. And this his were exactly the same."</i>
</p><p>Tentoo x Rose, post <i>Journey's End</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>clinomania</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">

        <li>
          Translation into Русский available: 
            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27643094">клиномания (clinomania)</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/der_Renaissance/pseuds/der_Renaissance">der_Renaissance</a>
        </li>


    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She’s not quite sure what to do with herself. His hand takes hers, as she watches a chapter of her life close that she hoped never would, and it feels familiar. But it feels different. She can’t put her finger on it - his hand is almost exactly the same temperature, with exactly the same firm hold as it ever had, and she can even feel the faint fluff of hair on his thumb. By all accounts, he’s her him. Just as she remembers him.</p><p>Then how come she just watched him leave?</p><p>She looks at him, the one standing next to her. There’s one fundamental difference between this him and the other him, other than lifespan. This him has said something the other him had never. It makes it that much harder for her to believe he’s the same. She can’t piece it together. In the moment she was swept away by a man that looked exactly like her love, but now she feels lost. She releases his hand, just in enough time to catch the slight change in his expression, a look of concern that shifts to sorrow. She hears Jackie sigh, and she’s pulled back to this beach, back into this moment, and when she looks back at him his face has shifted back. Still looking at her with concern, with empathy, so impossibly softly. So she takes back his hand, but with her other one, as she turns them both away to start their journey home.</p><p>***</p><p>He’s not quite sure what to do with himself. He doesn’t want to be any more or any less affectionate with her than he used to be, he doesn’t want to give her any more reason to doubt who he is. But it’s hard, because he’s ached for so long, has felt her presence only through lack of it and has craved the feel of her skin against his. </p><p>Its been a little over a week now, and he feels her distance more now than when the walls of the universes separated them. What a dreadful thing, to have found a way back to her for her to not feel the same anymore. </p><p>Jackie took him in straight away. Next to no difference in the way she treated him than before, if not just a little more affectionately. She notices Rose struggling to adjust, and she notices him struggling to cope with it. She doesn’t pity him, that’s not the right word. But she’ll catch him at the breakfast table when they come to visit, reading the paper with a glass of orange juice and notice that he’s just as lonely here as he was in her home world. He’ll still duck when she goes to kiss him, and he’ll continue to protest when she hugs him only tighter every time he does. But he gives in quicker, relaxes faster. Sometimes he’ll even give her a half-hearted hug in return.</p><p>“Give her time,” she says to him.</p><p>“Shame I’m not a time lord any more,” he jokes, but she sees through him. Those Tyler women have a knack for that. </p><p>“Well, I see one thing hasn’t changed, then. You’re still completely unable to talk about anything serious.”</p><p>“I love her.” </p><p>He says it simply. Quietly. Helplessly if not for the boundless truth in it. Jackie smiles sadly, and they leave it at that.</p><p>***</p><p>He doesn’t kiss her again. It’s terribly confusing, he’s always been the one to set the pace in their relationship. But he waits for her now. Nothing has changed, he’s the same man. But things have changed for her. Jackie was right: she needs time, and she needs space. Wretched, really, that there was once a time where he would have been able to give her all of the time and space in the universe. Now, though, he and time are not linked, and he has nothing but to abide by <em>its</em> laws now. But he doesn’t wait for her to catch up, he’s not waiting for her to finally fall fully in love with him. He’s just waiting for her to feel comfortable, safe, for her to feel his absolute unfiltered love in a way she could have never believed felt it before, even if it was there.</p><p>But he can’t stop himself from kissing her forehead when she leans on his shoulder, he can’t stop himself from ghosting his fingers down her spine when she cooks, from reaching for her when she pulls away in her sleep. He’s back to where he was before he lost her - wanting her, craving her, but not daring to change things. Not daring to lose her.</p><p>It’s been a little over two weeks now, and she feels his disillusionment. He never shows it, and he never says it, but she <em>knows</em> him. She can see the way his smile isn’t quite filled with honesty, and on the rare occasion it is, it's quick to fall out of apprehension. She sees the way he hesitates before she kisses him, he’s only got one heart now so he needs to protect it with all he’s got. She feels him breathe her in at night when she shuffles up closer and tucks her head into his neck. And she hears how steady his breath is when he finally releases it. Its times like these that she thinks maybe he is the same, he must be. Because she already knows him. </p><p>But it's still not quite right. It’s almost as though she has to remind herself that he’s him. That he’s <em>her</em> him. And he sees that. He can’t remind her constantly, its something she has to learn herself. </p><p>In the end its enough for him, he thinks, to just be free to love her. Really, it doesn’t matter if she wants to be with him or not, if she sees him as her him or a new him. Because she’s Rose Tyler, and she needs to be loved in this universe as fiercely and completely as he loves her.</p><p>***</p><p>On some level, she feels guilty. He’s got one life, he’s always been intrigued to be human and by some sheer stroke of luck she can never comprehend nor feel she deserves, he’s choosing to spend that one life with her. She should be grateful, she should be spending every minute of the day loving him openly. It’s getting easier to. She likes to think it’s in the way she scrambles into the fort of fresh bedsheets he’s lost himself in trying to sort out the bedding. Or it's in the way she kisses his cheek when he’s staring confusingly at a note he hastily scribbled for himself in his native script that morning. </p><p>“No idea.”</p><p>“You wrote it!”</p><p>“I can’t confirm I did. I’m not even sure that’s Gallifreyan.”He scratches his sideburns before waving a hand in dismissal, but she yanks at his arm to bring him back down for a kiss.</p><p>But no matter how guilty she feels, no matter how pressured she feels, she realises one day that she never once gets that pressure from <em>him</em>. That he sits and reads his book either with or without her feet propped up on his lap. That he brushes her hair when she gets out of the shower because she always did hate those knots, and he always did treat them gently. She feels selflessly adored, when he looks at her with unadulterated pride on the days she believes in herself less. He never loved her because of what he could get out of it and she couldn’t ever be sure that he was <em>in </em>love with her. But she knew this Doctor was the same as the other in their love <em>for</em> her. Their love of <em>her</em>.</p><p>***</p><p>She doesn’t know if the moment she realised was out of the blue or a moment she was always going to reach. But it all clicks one morning, just a regular one at that. </p><p>She was just starting to wake up. She stirred, not yet opening her eyes but listening to the rain tap incessantly on the window. She didn’t want to go to work, not if it meant leaving this comfy warm bed and setting foot in that dismal wet. He hadn’t moved, which told her he was awake. She smiled, because it reminded her that when he sleeps he unconsciously stirs whenever she does. </p><p>“What?” He was facing her. Smiling too, she could tell. </p><p>“Nothing,” she replied. “Just knew you were awake.”</p><p>He moved, and she was a little sad to feel it was away from her. But he was still there, just flopped onto his back. She heard him yawn and scratch his neck, and she opened her eyes then. His were closed now, so she took a moment to study him. This was nothing new, they would wake to each other every morning before they were separated, especially towards the end. More often than not, she’d wake to find him looking back at her, or stroking her hair as he stared up at the ceiling, lost in thought. But on the odd occasion, when she would wake and he’d still be sleeping, she’d fallen into the habit of mapping out his freckles, like tiny constellation points across a time lord’s face. She knew those freckles, knew their every position in relation to the others. And <em>this</em> his were exactly the same. There was something comforting about playing the same game with herself now as she did before her heart knew what it felt like to be shattered beyond repair.</p><p>“I can’t face that rain,” he groaned and she smiled. His hand had found hers at some point after she’d woken up. Or maybe hers had found his - she couldn’t be sure.</p><p>“We could just call in sick.”</p><p><em>“Rose Tyler!</em> Pristine, my record is. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”</p><p>“Alright, well, suit yourself. I’m stayin’ here. In my pyjamas, in this bed. Watching that TV.” </p><p>“You’re really going to do this to me?”</p><p>She nodded, wrapping her arms tightly around one of his and nuzzling his shoulder. She wanted him to stay with her, she always did. </p><p>After a few moments, she heard him sigh defeatedly. “I’ll get us a cup of tea.” He shuffled out of the covers and she heard him gasp at the cold. “<em>Sod this,</em> where’s your internal temperature regulator? How do you lot cope?”</p><p>“Like I said: pyjamas, bed. Staying.”</p><p>“A solid argument, from start to finish. Very well articulated, cannot fault.”</p><p>“And grab us something to eat too, I’m starving.”</p><p>“Starting to think this bunking off idea of yours is working out better for you than it is for me.”</p><p>She smirked, reaching for her phone as she heard the kettle start to boil from the kitchen. She had a couple of texts from Jake, asking if she wanted to meet up later for dinner. She felt sad, she missed her friend. She and Mickey had become so close when she was trying to find her way back, and now that he was gone she felt like she was missing something. Like a part of her life was empty now. And Jake felt it too, so they would lean on each other. She loved that the Doctor only ever went with her when she asked. He understood that when her friend said he needed her, he needed <em>her</em>.</p><p>He came back in with a bowl of granola for her, a few slices of raspberry jam toast for himself and two cups of tea. She sat up and took the bowl from him. “Ta.”</p><p>“Welcome.”</p><p>She nodded to her phone. “It’s Jake. He wants to meet for dinner later.”</p><p>“He alright? How’s he doing?”</p><p>She finished her mouthful of granola. “I don’t know,” she sighed. </p><p>“You should bring something round to his. We could make those pancakes, remember, the one’s we used to make from that recipe book we found on Basla 19? You could take those.”</p><p>“Yeah.” She looked up at him. “Actually, <em>yeah</em>. That’s a really nice idea.”</p><p>He smiled back at her. “I have been known to sprout one out every now and then.”</p><p>Her brow furrowed. She looked down at her granola now she was just about halfway through, shifting her spoon around, searching, “This new granola? Got no raisins in this one.”</p><p>“Mmm, no. I picked them out.”</p><p>She looked back up at him, confused. “You picked them out?”</p><p>“Yeah.” He took the last bite out of his toast, finishing his second slice. “I know you don’t like them.” He leaned over to his table, taking a sip of tea and settling back down into bed, mug in hand. “Oh, that’s a good cuppa.”</p><p>She hadn’t taken her eyes off him, nor had she moved. “You picked out <em>every</em> <em>single</em> raisin from this bowl of granola because you know I don’t like them?”</p><p>He looked back at her, weary. “Have you changed your mind since you’ve been over here? I wouldn’t blame you, bloody mad that you never liked them.”</p><p>She breathed out a laugh, her smile widening. He looked even more perplexed as she did. “What?”</p><p>Reaching for his mug from his hands, she put that and her bowl down on her bedside table. She took one last look at his now utterly confused face, <em>his gorgeous helpless face</em> she thought, before clambering over him, sitting on his lap. She took his face in her hands and kissed him deeply, melting into him when he pulled her in closer. “I love you.” She whispered against his lips. It was honest, all she could give him. A promise.</p><p><em>“Raisins?”</em> he said, confused. “Raisins? <em>They’re </em>what did it for you?”</p><p>“Raisins,” she confirmed, mapping out his constellation of freckles with her kisses.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>